Collection One - Glenwood Summer
For one of the first release of scarves we decided to come up with a design inspired by our garden at Glenwood which has a history of its own.
The Glenwood house was built with old granite/blue stone by Mr Norman Smith (Norm’s great grandfather) in 1904 with extensions to the house, the fence around the house and the tennis court done in 1925. The blocks for the homestead were made on site at Glenwood.
In 1954 the Glenwood garden was extended by Mr and Mrs Lester and Hazel Smith (Norm’s grand parents), which was when the beautiful in ground swimming pool was added.
A landscape/garden designer Mrs Jocelyn Brown from Appin, south West of Sydney was engaged to design the garden.
Coincidently in 2004 when I was having a morning tea for pre-schoolers in the area Jocelyn’s great grand children Georgina, Lachlan and Eloise Brown came with their parents Lisa and Nigel Brown who lived at Geurie, a small village between Wellington and Dubbo.
In the 1970’s an entrance was created in the front fence and a large park area was made with mostly native trees and fruit trees planted by Norm’s parents (Grannie & Bee) Mr and Mrs Brian and Jean Smith.
At the back of the homestead were the maid’s room, the billiards room and the laundry. Being made of weatherboard, these were removed in the 1970’s and replaced with grapevines and lawn. You can still see the remains of the foundations and the old copper from the original laundry. In 2001 the grapevines were removed and replaced with lawn as an area for the children to play.
The old dairy, where butter was made and the milk separated were under the round tank stand. This was restored in 2014 with renovations to the western side of the house. This is when the beautiful sheep weather vane made out of black metal was created to sit on the very top.
Where the rose garden and birdbath now stand was originally a large fishpond and then a large beautiful Willow tree. We replaced this in 2009 as it had sadly died and was dangerous with limbs falling randomly.
In 2014 we renovated the kitchen, laundry and garage using the original moulds from 1925 – we found these and sent them to Sydney to have a plastic mould made to make the matching bricks for the renovations in Sandstone.
In the renovations we removed outside rooms, which were the fishing room, the dogs room and the old meat house. We have also made the old dairy into our very own museum of old equipment and tools used on Glenwood in the years gone by.
The soil in the Glenwood garden is extremely alkaline and many plants cannot be grown. The water for the garden comes from the big dam behind the Glenwood woolshed, which was built by Mr. Lester Smith (Norms Grandfather in the 1950’s), via gravitational flow.
The garden when Norm and I moved into the homestead in 2001 was absolutely beautifully maintained by Norm’s mum Mrs Jean Smith – it was so impressive that every year the National Trust would hold an open garden day in which the garden was open to the public. Jean is pictured below on Smokey Cape Beach (near South West Rocks) wearing the "Glenwood Summer" scarf printed on natural with her dog Molly.
I am not much of a gardener (perhaps I will be inspired one day) hence Norm and I have tried very hard to create a garden of low maintenance with many native plants and grasses.
We feel very blessed to live in a home with a garden as gorgeous as ours and count our blessings for all the hard work created by Norm’s family over the last 112 years.
Last year our Love Merino designer Manuela Strano came to visit Glenwood for the weekend to get an understanding of us, our family and farm, and what we do and are trying to achieve. In doing so Manny took photos of our garden which was where we came up with the idea of a design based on the plants from the Glenwood garden for one of our first scarves – “Glenwood Summer”. Some of Manny's original sketches are below.
This design “Glenwood Summer” complements our other screen-printed design “Paper Daisy” which is based on the native grass called Paper Daisy found in the paddocks of Glenwood.
Mark and Steph from Publisher Textiles and Papers eventually recreated Manuela’s design digitally for screen-printing.
Following many hours of sketching and designing by Manny I love the design she came up with and I am sure you will too – especially when you see the gorgeous colours that it will be showcased in.
Until next time – stay safe and happy
